les winter
I use oil stones with water on my mostly A2 blades and chisels. I recently bought a new fine india and a new medium india. Both arrived a bit out of flat. Both boxes had instructions to use oil or tap water. I do not remember the tap water option being discusses before.

I took an extra coarse DMT to the fine india and immediately got a mess of extremely thick oil which clogged the DMT. It was a job to clean it up. It's not usable for flattening the india.

So I took out a glass plate and some 45 grit silicon carbide powder and went to work using windex to dilute the powder and clean off the stone after a few rubs. All is well.

But the notion that I can use water vs. the oily mess on the diamond stone has me confused.

The india's work fine with dilute simple green detergent for sharpening very small micro bevels.

Do I need to boil the india to remove the internal oil to allow periodic flattening with the diamond stone, or am I stuck using abrasive powder?

thanks
Les